Tuesday, February 28, 2017

For decades, Henry Mintzberg has taught enlightened business management at McGill. Yesterday, in the Globe and Mail, he turned his attention to the management of the world. The major office holders, he wrote, are not enlightened. The problem we all face is how to survive these bullies:

We are in an era of bullies – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte and the rest – unless people
concerned about this planet and our progeny do something. What can we
do? Since the usual is not working, how about the impossible – at least
seemingly so? After all, if Donald Trump can be elected President of the
United States, surely anything is possible.

So Mintzberg makes a modest proposal:

Imagine a Peace Council, made up of democratic nations with no nuclear
weapons and no recent history of belligerence. Of course, this idea is
impossible – so long as our thinking remains stuck in the existing world
order. But if such a grouping was called together by a respected
authority (Pope Francis, perhaps?) and vested with legitimacy by
concerned people around the world, the whole thrust of international
relations could change.

Bear in mind one clear message of the
Trump, Brexit, Bernie Sanders and other votes: that a great many regular
people are now prepared to act on the resentment they feel. The trouble
is that, not knowing where to turn, many have vented their anger
ineffectually. Mr. Trump may prove to be an awful choice for the people
who elected him.

What if, to replace
the deceptive rhetoric of populist politicians, a coalition of prominent
NGOs – including, for example, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and
Doctors Without Borders – issued a compelling vision, around which
concerned people everywhere could coalesce: a vision for balance across
economic, political and social interests.

After
all, the particular concerns of these NGOs – human rights, degradation
of the environment and health services in disaster zones – have common
cause, namely a world out of balance in favour of narrow, economic
interests. With such a vision, concerned people could organize in their
communities, and use the social media to connect around the world.

This could create a global groundswell for the restoration of decency
and democracy. They could constrain globalization where it challenges
legitimate national sovereignties, while targeting countries for their
atrocities and boycotting organizations for their wrongdoings. And who
better to get behind initiatives for global decency and democracy than
Canadians, with our history of peacekeeping and of so many renowned
figures who stood up for a better world?

Monday, February 27, 2017

The warmup act for a full-blown American fascism and orchestrated race
war is taking place in immigrant and marginal communities across the
United States: Racial profiling. Random police stops. Raids at homes and
businesses. People of color pulled from vehicles at checkpoints.
Seizures of individuals with no criminal records or who never committed a
serious crime. Imprisonment without trial. Expedited deportation
hearings and removal proceedings that violate human rights. The arrest
of a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
program, Daniel Ramirez Medina, 23, who along with the program’s other
750,000 successful applicants had revealed all personal history to the
government in applying for DACA status. Parents separated, perhaps
forever, from their children. The hunted going underground. The end of
the rule of law. The abandonment of the common good. The obliteration of
a social state in which institutions and assistance programs—from
public education to Social Security and welfare—make justice, equality
and dignity possible.

There are historical precedents:

The Trump orders are written not to make America great again but to make America white. They are an updated version of the Nazis’ Nuremberg race laws, the Jim Crow laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Naturalization Act of 1870.
They are intended to institutionalize an overt racial hierarchy in the
United States, one already advanced by the miniature police states in
which marginal communities of color find themselves.

It's all part of a "revolution" which Steve Bannon previewed at last week's CPAC conference. Bannon is quite a piece of work:

In a 2014 speech, Bannon said, “I believe we’ve come partly off-track
in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we’re starting now
in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our
church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of
capitalism.” (He delivered the talk via Skype to a group of other
right-wing Catholics gathered in the Vatican. For a transcript posted by
BuzzFeed, click here.)

“There is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global,” Bannon
said. “It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s
media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead
to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every
day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it,
and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that
we didn’t act.”

Bannon's chief responsibility appears to be filling Trump's empty head with ideas. But they're not new ideas. They're very old and -- Bannon obviously knows the meaning of the word -- they're very vicious.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Elections are coming in Europe. That's where -- not in the United States -- we will see the first reverberations of the Trump Effect. Six months ago, it looked like Europe was drifting dangerously to the Right. Now -- after the world has had fifteen weeks of Trump -- Tony Burman writes that things are looking a little different:

For Europeans, Donald Trump’s chaotic circus
finally came to town. Last weekend, senior members of the Trump
administration spoke at the annual Munich security conference where, for
the past five decades, Europe’s political and military establishment
have met to review the world’s most threatening security challenges.

But
Pence’s audience knew that these assurances were bogus. His boss was
already on the record as ridiculing the EU and calling for its breakup,
for applauding the Brexit vote in Britain and insulting German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, and for expressing his apparent puppy love —
again and again and again — for Russia’s despised Vladimir Putin.

European
leaders have every reason to be worried. After all, Trump’s hostility
and Putin’s aggression are a toxic mix. But it may actually be the
voting booths of Europe — far from the heartland of America — that will
provide Trump with his first big electoral rebuke.

Trump's cabinet officers say one thing. Trump says another. And Trump's the president. The Europeans know that Trump won't make America great again. He'll shrink it to an emaciated ghost of what it used to be. Burman has it right:

Step right up and see it before it’s over. America’s Shrinking Superpower: the greatest show on earth.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Kevin O'Leary has been making the occasional trip up from Boston in his bid to become Prime Minister of Canada. His sales pitch -- like Donald Trump's -- is that, as a business man, he knows how to get things done. Alan Freeman writes:

O’Leary’s Trump-esque bid to lead the Conservative party is based on
selling his supposed business acumen. But as is the case with the U.S.
president, O’Leary’s policies are largely incoherent and mostly based on
‘alternative facts’. In the end, it’s all about one thing and one thing
only: Kevin O’Leary. And it’s a reminder that being successful in
business (or the narcissism industry) really has nothing to do with your
ability to run a government or lead a country.

Consider O'Leary's position on the federal government loan to Bombardier:

O’Leary has been on a rant about Bombardier for years, calling it
“one of the most mismanaged aerospace companies in the world.” At
another point, he said it was time to cut Bombardier off from any
government assistance and allow it to “succeed on its own or fail on its
own.”

Okay … so O’Leary is willing to sacrifice the 21,000 well-paid
Canadian jobs at Canada’s largest investor in R&D. You can make a
case for the idea of ending corporate welfare. But that’s not what O’Leary is talking about. In his latest Bombardier rant,
posted this week on his Facebook feed, O’Leary says he understands why
Ottawa would want to support Bombardier and adds that it’s important for
the company’s customers to know their government backs the company.

The problem, says O’Leary, is that Justin Trudeau has “never done any
deals.” O’Leary . . . has done
lots. “No more stupid deals,” he bloviates. “I could negotiate that
(Bombardier) deal in 24 hours.”

But is he really good at making deals? Look at his record on Bombardier:

In November of 2015, during one of his periodic anti-Bombardier
diatribes, he told an interviewer, “I wouldn’t touch that stock. It’s
radioactive waste.” At the time, Bombardier shares were trading at about
$1.25 apiece.

Five months later, the company landed a deal to sell up to 125 of its
C-Series jetliners to Delta Airlines in a deal worth as much US$5.6
billion. If you had bought $10,000 worth of Bombardier shares when
O’Leary was telling you not to, you would have doubled your money.
Clearly, nobody ever told Kevin about buying low and selling high.

Donald Trump's record as a business man is pretty spotty. So is Kevin O'Leary's. And, like Trump, you can't believe a word he says.

Friday, February 24, 2017

The world is awash in refugees. And the world is closing its eyes and its doors. Crawford Killian writes:

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, over 65 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced
— the equivalent of almost two Canadas. More than 21 million are
refugees, half of them from just three countries: Somalia, Afghanistan,
and Syria. And more than half of those 21 million are under the age of
18.

Whether we like it or not, we’re in the midst of the greatest displacement
of people in human history, and it will only get worse. Climate change
is making vast stretches of Africa and the Middle East uninhabitable,
fit only for warlords to fight over. Climate-driven wars, droughts, and
floods will force still more from the tropics to the temperate zones.

Not all will die on Libyan beaches.
Some will make it to Mexico, or the U.S., and then to the Canadian
border. Millions, already living in the U.S., will head north — spurred
by new deportation rules now being developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

We can also expect plenty of native-born Americans following the
Vietnam war resisters of the 1960s, not to mention expatriate Canadians
running for home while the running is good.

The question isn't should we accept them. After all, we are a nation of refugees:

The United Empire Loyalists were refugees. So were the Irish fleeing the
potato famine of the 1840s and the Black people escaping slavery in the
American South. The Doukhobors were Russian refugees, their escape paid
for by Leo Tolstoy’s book royalties.

The question is how do we accept them. Killian suggests that we:

Pour money into provincial school systems and post-secondaries,
especially for English and French language training. Most refugees are
young, and half are children. Move them through the system toward jobs
and careers we’ll need, and then deliver the jobs.

Find or build housing in smaller towns and cities to shelter
refugees while they learn the language and the country. The money will
boost local economies and create a climate of opportunity for refugee
entrepreneurs to open their own businesses. Canadians have acquired a
taste for global cuisine in the past half-century, and I can’t wait to
try Syrian and Somali cuisine.

Pour more money into healthcare, especially mental health. No one is
displaced without suffering severe stress, and refugees will need
strong support to get through a very bad time. Once through it, they’ll
give back far more than they received.

Fast-track the professionals among the refugees. The doctors,
teachers, and engineers should resume their careers as soon as possible.
Many will have U.S. experience, and will settle in quickly. But all
should find meaningful work.

Use the refugees to create the infrastructure for future waves.
Because they will assuredly come, like the multiple waves of a tsunami.

That means spending money. But that's how we have built this country. If done right, refugees become an asset, not a burden.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Justin Trudeau went to Washington a couple of weeks ago. His mission was to keep the border open. But, with Donald Trump as president, having an open border has taken on a whole new meaning. Bill C-23 -- which has not yet been passed -- allows American border guards to act within Canada. Emilie Taman writes:

What many Canadians don’t know is that our government is about to
hand significant powers over to the Trump administration that will allow
American border security officers to arrest Canadians on Canadian soil.

We should all be scared. Since taking office in January, Trump has
advanced racist policies, attacked the free press, undermined the
judiciary, maligned reasonable voices and courted controversy at every
turn.

We are allowing Trump's police force to act as if they are on American soil:

The newly empowered U.S. border guards will, under C-23, be allowed
to detain, question, seize property, frisk, strip-search and arrest
Canadian citizens on Canadian soil.

C-23 not only gives new powers to U.S. border guards — it takes away our own rights as Canadians.

Currently, any Canadian who wants to exit a preclearance area can
just walk away; it’s still Canadian territory, after all. If C-23 is
passed, it will not be so easy.

Under C-23, once you’re detained by a U.S. border guard, there is no escape; they
decide when you can leave. And even if a Canadian traveller has an
uneasy feeling and wants to leave the preclearance area prior to being
detained, the new law would require that person to justify the decision
to leave. In short, C-23 gives Trump’s guards all the power they need to
hold anyone they want.

Moreover, it threatens the right of permanent residents of Canada to
be able to return home from abroad. And even if guards are found to be
abusing this policy, the bill gives them protection from prosecution.

Not only are we ceding our sovereignty on Canadian soil, we could end
up stranding vulnerable Canadian residents in Trump’s America with
little recourse to protect ourselves.

Trump may well succeed in destroying the bedrock principles upon which his nation was built. We should not allow him to destroy the foundations of this country.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Donald Trump has a fevered brain. But, James Laxer writes, there is a method to his madness. Under the tutelage of Steve Bannon, he seeks to establish a new world order -- something quite different than the system which was established after World War II:

Since 1945, America’s political leadership has
developed an international, liberal global order with the United States
at its centre. The system privileged the American dollar and American
corporations, bolstering the “free world” with the might of the U.S.
military. The goal was to keep America at the core and to push the
Soviet Union to the periphery.

In the post
Soviet era, the American response to Russia has continued to be to keep
its own alliance system intact and to sustain the liberal international
order.

Bannon has always seen Trump as an empty vessel -- the perfect instrument to remake the world in his image: That image seems disjointed. But Laxer argues that the pieces fit together:

An entente with Russia would permit the
world’s two leading nuclear powers to seek naked dominance in their
respective spheres. Russia would be allowed a freer hand in its “near
abroad” with dire potential consequences for Ukraine and other eastern
European countries bordering on Russia.

In
its own much larger sphere, the United States would be free to pursue
its economic, political and military goals without much regard for the
interests of so-called allied powers. The guise of defending the “free
world” against Russia would be set aside along with the rules based
trading system of the WTO and regional trading blocs. Trump has already
ditched the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Trump
and Bannon prefer a more openly brutal system of bilateral relations
between the U.S. and other countries. Canadians take note. Within NAFTA,
Mexico is the chief target now. Canada could be later. Bilateralism
would allow the U.S. to exert maximum pressure on trading partners, one
by one.

Add China to the mix and you get three empires. What Bannon wants to establish is a newer version of what existed before World War I:

Such a global arrangement would not be the first time in history that
major powers have made common cause in pursuit of their own interests.
In the late 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck fostered,
for a time, an entente among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.

Like most modern conservatives, Trump and Bannon want to turn back the clock -- while the present goes to hell.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

These are dark days -- because Donald Trump appears committed to what he said he will do. Joe Stiglitz writes:

It is now clear that what Trump says and tweets must be taken seriously.
After the election in November, many hoped he would abandon the
extremism that defined his campaign. Surely, it was thought, this master
of unreality would adopt a different persona as he assumed the
responsibility of what is arguably the most powerful position in the
world.

Indeed he plans to instititute "a ban on Muslim immigration, [build] a wall on the border with Mexico,
[renegotiate] the North American Free Trade Agreement, repeal of the
2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms, and much else that even his supporters dismissed."

Changes need to be made -- but not the kind of changes Trump envisions:

I have at times criticised particular aspects and policies of the
economic and security order created in the aftermath of the second world
war, based on the UNs, Nato, the EU, and a web of other institutions
and relationships. But there is a big difference between attempts to
reform these institutions and relationships to enable them to serve the
world better, and an agenda that seeks to destroy them outright.

But, in the midst of the gloom Stiglitz sees signs of hope:

If there is a silver lining in the Trump cloud, it is a new sense of
solidarity over core values such as tolerance and equality, sustained by
awareness of the bigotry and misogyny, whether hidden or open, that
Trump and his team embody. And this unity has gone global, with Trump
and his allies facing rejection and protests throughout the democratic
world.

Similarly, across the country, companies’ employees and customers
have expressed their concern over CEOs and board members who support
Trump. Indeed US corporate leaders and investors have collectively
become Trump’s enablers. At this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in
Davos, many salivated over his promises of tax cuts and deregulation,
while eagerly ignoring his bigotry – not mentioning it in a single
meeting that I attended – and protectionism.

Franklin Roosevelt was accused of being a traitor to his class. It's clear that Trump plans no such mutiny. That is why, Stiglitz writes, people all over the world must "be vigilant and resist at every turn."

Monday, February 20, 2017

I have been dumbfounded by Donald Trump's supporters. If the polls are correct, about 35% of Americans believe Trump can get and do nothing wrong. That conclusion is obviously contrary to the facts. Joan Smith, writing in The Guardian, has an explanation:

The 45th president of the US invited on stage a man who later revealed he has a 6ft cardboard model of his hero and talks to it every day.

Let’s just pause and think about that. This is a leader whose ego is so
fragile, he wants to appear on stage with someone most of us would
change seats to avoid if he sat next to us on a train. I should point
out that Trump chose this particular supporter to appear beside him
after he saw him being interviewed on TV before the rally. Ignoring the
advice of his security officials: “He said, ‘I love Trump’ … Let him up.
I’m not worried about him. I’m only worried he’s going to give me a
kiss.”

It is an alarming insight into how Trump (though, not just Trump)
operates. Few politicians, no matter how thin-skinned, have displayed
such neediness nor demanded such displays of unconditional love from
their supporters. Neediness is not usually considered attractive in men
who like to be thought of as tough, but Trump is rewriting the rulebook
on masculinity.

The trick all along has been to disguise neediness as empathy. When
Trump talks about love to the crowds who turn out to see him, they think
it’s what he’s offering. In reality, it’s what he demands from them,
needing it to fuel the endorphin rush that keeps him going. You can see
this process in action as he gets hyped up on stage, prompting a
stream-of-consciousness outpouring of personal attacks, weird
fabrications and outright lies.

Trump's supporters mistake his neediness for empathy. And they are just as needy as he is:

The symbiosis between leader and supporters is so close that it’s hard
to interrupt, existing outside the more or less rational sphere
conventional politicians are used to occupying. For the exceptionally
loyal base that turns up at rallies, it doesn’t matter if the polls are
terrible, because they aren’t part of the inner circle. Here’s the
crucial point: when the identification is so close, giving up on the
leader would be like giving up on yourself.

To reject Trump would be to reject themselves. Fragile egos and political power form a toxic mixture.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Donald Trump's sales pitch was that, as a businessman, he knew how to get things done. His first thirty days in the White House suggest that he doesn't know how to get anything done. But Joe Stiglitz suggests that, when it comes to economic relations between nations, Trump threatens to get a lot of things undone.

While there is some debate about the extent to which Trump is a
“successful businessman,” there is no successful country that is
grounded on the principles—or the lack of principles—upon which he has
grown his businesses. Economists believe that a successful economy is
based on trust, backed up by the rule of law. His standard business
practice has been to stiff his suppliers, knowing that recourse to
courts is expensive. Of course, over the long term, honest suppliers
know this, and refuse to deal. Less scrupulous vendors overcharge and
cheat, taking advantage too of the imperfections in our judicial system.
But there is no successful economy based on the Trump model.

Trump's inability to tell the truth is particularly problematic:

Trump cannot even be trusted to base statements on reality. He seeks to
build himself up by belittling his predecessor. Trump is wrong in his
characterization of where the U.S. economy is today. The country as a
whole has never had a higher G.D.P. The crime rate and the unemployment
rate are markedly lower than they were eight years ago. Yes, America
faces a variety of problems—it always has, and what nation doesn’t?
Ordinary citizens have not been well served by globalization. The
problem, though, is not with globalization itself but with how we have
managed it.

So far, globalization has been very unfair. But playing for all the marbles will not improve it. And playing for all the marbles is the only thing that Trump knows how to do.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Some Conservative MPs have suggested that adoption of this non-binding
motion will somehow constrain free speech by condemning hatred of Islam.
Leadership candidates Kellie Leitch and Kevin O’Leary
have, as usual, been trolling well beneath contempt. “No religion
should be singled out for special consideration,” said Leitch. “A slap
in the face to other religions,” said O’Leary, ignoring the motion’s
condemnation of systemic racism and religious discrimination.

The truth is that there’s pressure on Conservative leadership
candidates to keep the back door open to the Islamaphobe vote. How else
can you explain Leitch’s posting of a photo of a (blue-eyed) young woman
wearing spaghetti straps, her lips sealed with a tape marked M-103, the number of Khalid’s motion?
In the background is a faint image of police officers on Parliament
Hill — a not-so-subtle reference to the 2014 attack on the Commons.

Then there’s candidate Pierre Lemieux (whoever he is), who said that
Islamophobia isn’t at the forefront of discussion and isn’t a problem in
Canada. He clearly hasn’t been watching the news for the past month.
Maxime Bernier says he’s worried the motion would restrict freedom to
criticize Islam — and then somehow managed to link its passage to
support for Sharia law.

Of the candidates for leadership, only the thoughtful and eminently
reasonable Michael Chong has said he would support the motion. Others
are openly hostile, or are trying to slither out of supporting it. Not
an edifying sight.

Friday, February 17, 2017

Donald Trump's press conference yesterday was surreal. He spent a minute announcing his new choice for Secretary of Labor and then spent the next seventy-eight minutes lambasting the press and the intelligence community for doing in his national security advisor, Mike Flynn. Michael Harris writes:

This is where the alternate universe stuff kicks in. The firing was conducted by President Trump. The next day, the other
half of the presidential personality — The Donald — kicked in: Flynn
was suddenly a wonderful person who had been treated badly by the “fake”
media. At a press conference yesterday that looked more like primal
scream therapy, Trump said Flynn was just doing his job. In fact, the
president went one further. If Flynn hadn’t been phoning Russia and
other countries, Trump would have ordered him to make the calls.

Not even Trump’s malapropisms can hide the truth. Flynn was fired
because the intelligence community leaked what he had actually talked
about to the Russians. That turned out to be a very different thing than
what he told Vice-President Pence or the American people. It was not
Flynn’s outrageous communication with the Russians per se that caused
Trump to ditch this guy. It was getting caught in a lie that made
Trump’s right-hand man look like a dork. Worse, it was the truth getting
out.

It's been obvious for a long time that Trump is allergic to the truth. So he invents his own. But more than his aversion to the truth there is a much more devastating indictment of the man. He is appallingly ignorant:

Donald Trump’s grasp of geopolitics is no deeper than Bob the
Builder’s. Yet there is one area of foreign affairs where his views have
been consistently expressed — the relationship with Russia. He has
publicly stated that Vladimir Putin, for all the blood on his hands, was
a better leader than President Obama. He has ridiculed and threatened
NATO. He even got the GOP to soften its hard stand against Russian
intervention in Ukraine. And two of his top campaign workers, Paul
Manafort and Michael Flynn, had close ties with Russia.

And he has worked very hard to keep Americans ignorant of the fact that he is in deep hock to foreign lenders:

Evelyn Farkas, the former top Russia expert at the Pentagon, is calling
for an investigation of Trump himself. Not for alleged unconventional
bathing habits. She is concerned that Trump’s business and financial
dealings may have left him open to blackmail. After all, the giving,
lending or guaranteeing of money could be used to exercise powerful
influence over a person. So far — like dead men — the Donald’s taxes
have told no tales.

Coincidentally, Donald Trump owes approximately $300 million to Deutsche
Bank, which has just gone through all of Trump’s business dealings with
the bank to see if there were any connections to Russia. Deutsche Bank
was recently fined $640 million by the U.S. and U.K. for failing to stop
the laundering of $10 billion of Russian funds through its Moscow
branch. The bank will not comment on the outcome of its internal review,
but it is being pressured to farm out its assessment to independent
auditors.

Not even Rod Serling could have dreamt up this story. But Trump has entered the Twilight Zone. And he has hauled the entire nation in there with him.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Lawrence Martin writes that the Conservatives appear ready to take a leap off the cliff. The two leading contenders for the leadership of the party are Maxime Bernier and Kevin O'Leary:

If the polls are to be believed, it’s
become a two-man race between newcomer Kevin O’Leary and libertarian
Maxime Bernier. Kellie Leitch is far back. The more conventionally
styled Tory candidates are not even within shouting range.

Mr.
Bernier would be the biggest privatizer the party has ever had as
leader. One of his radical planks is to end the federal role in funding
health care by transferring tax points to the provinces. This could
bring on a Balkanized system as well as more and more privatization. It
risks, argues candidate Michael Chong, moving voters away from the party
in droves.

Choosing Mr. O’Leary could invite as much, if not more, peril. He has
never been elected, has no background in the party, is unilingual,
hasn’t lived in Canada for years and has a policy kit – decried as
juvenile by critics – that is all over the ideological map and devoid of
substance.

Modern conservatism has become as scrambled as Donald Trump's brain. Andrew Coyne writes:

Conservatism used to have some claim to being a coherent political
philosophy. Of late it has become a series of dares. The most extreme
voice will lay down the most extreme position, then challenge others to
endorse it.

As often as not this has nothing to do with conservatism. It is
rather a kind of moral exhibitionism, populist virtue-signalling, in
which the object is to say and do the most intolerant or ill-considered
thing that comes to mind — anything that might attract the condemnation
of bien-pensants in the media and elsewhere, whose opposition becomes
proof in itself of its merits.

The willingness to court such controversy in turn becomes the test of
political purity. To demur, conversely, can only be a sign of
cowardice, or worse, liberalism, a heresy that that would seem to have
overcome much of the conservative movement, to judge by the
ever-lengthening list of the excommunicated.

Like it or hate it, conservatism used to possess internal consistency. All the parts fit together. Now the parts form a toxic brew and the centre will not hold.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

The conventional wisdom seems to be that Justin -- or as he is known these days in Washington -- Joe Trudeau's visit with Donald Trump went pretty well. On the surface, it looks like the prime minister didn't yield any ground. But, Susan Delacourt writes, Trumpism is moving north:

Edelman, the public-relations firm that compiles the annual index,
has put Canada into the “distruster” nation category for the first time
in the 17-year history of the global survey. “Distrusters” are nations
in which most people express distrust in their civic institutions.

The evidence? According to the index, one in two Canadians fears that
newcomers to the country are “damaging our economy and national
culture.” A full 80 per cent agreed that elites were “out of touch” with
regular people and 40 per cent agreed that they were being unfairly
denied access to the education and opportunities they needed to get
ahead.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents — 61 per cent — said they didn’t
have confidence in the country’s leaders to address the challenges
facing the nation.

The virus has gone global and has found ready hosts in people like Kevin O'Leary and Kellie Leitch. Delacourt warns:

Trump isn’t Trudeau’s real problem. What threatens Trudeau’s government
is the populist discontent that brought Trump to power. These new
numbers confirm that Canada isn’t isolated from trends seen south of the
border.

But it’s the speed of the downturn that’s especially
remarkable. Trust in government has slipped from 53 per cent to 43 per
cent since last year’s index. Trust in the media has similarly plummeted
— from 55 per cent last year to 45 per cent this year. The decline in
public trust in business and non-governmental organizations was less
sharp: business went from 56 per cent trust in 2016 to 50 per cent in
2017, and NGOs fell only two percentage points, from 61 to 59 per cent.

Lisa Kimmel, president and CEO of Edelman Canada, said on Tuesday
they had expected to see some erosion of trust in government as Canada
moved farther away from the heady, 2015 “change” rhetoric — but they
“just didn’t anticipate it would be that dramatic.”

Justin is in Brussels today talking up CETA. But he'd better keep his eye on the public and civic health challenges that lie ahead here at home.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Mike Flynn is out. And he's out because he followed his boss's lead: he did something he shouldn't have done and then he lied about it. The irony is rich. But the whole episode takes place as details about how Trump has been dealing with the North Korean missile launch leak out. Trump got the news when he was having dinner at Mar -a-Lago with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe -- in the public dining room. Richard Wolfe writes:

Now: what do Michael Flynn and Mar-a-Lago mean for national security?

To the fee-paying members of Trump’s Florida club, it means greater
access to watch the president and Japanese prime minister reacting to
the news of a North Korean missile launch in real time: huddling over
documents and making phone calls on cellphones in public.

One of the guests who was paying for his dinner took out his cellphone, then told the world what happened next:

As one guest, Richard DeAgazio, put it on Facebook: “HOLY MOLY!!! It
was fascinating to watch the flurry of activity at dinner when the news
came that North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of Japan.
The Prime Minister Abe of Japan huddles with his staff and the President
is on the phone with Washington DC…Wow…the center of the action!!!

Wolfe reminds his readers:

It was the homestretch of the presidential election and national
security wasn’t some side issue, mentioned in passing. Trump promised he
would be a tough national security president with the toughest national
security team.

In fact, one of his favorite arguments was that Hillary Clinton
couldn’t be trusted with the country’s national security because, he
claimed, she couldn’t be trusted with her private email server.

The irony is Shakespearean. During the George W. Bush administration a phrase surfaced to describe Bush's personnel -- the Mayberry Machiavellis. If you thought they had disappeared, you were wrong.

Monday, February 13, 2017

When Justin Trudeau walks into his meeting with President Trump, Michael Harris writes, he should remember who he's dealing with. The Donald is a known quantity:

Trudeau should remember that Trump recently used his POTUS account on
Twitter to denounce … a department store. What’s next, an air strike?
It happened right after Nordstrom dropped the fashion line of his
daughter, Ivanka.

Perhaps our PM should note that Trump’s bit of nasty nepotism on
Twitter came just 21 minutes after the President was slated to receive
his daily intelligence briefing. The world may be about to go up, but
you have to keep your priorities straight, right? Syria is one thing,
but Ivanka’s bling line?

For those who think that calling Trump crazy is disrespectful,
uncalled for, and beneath contempt, it is actually simple reporting.
Sen. Al Franken (D — Minn), for example, has already openly questioned
Trump’s mental health on national television. The Senator from Minnesota
observed that Trump “lies a lot” and “that is not the norm for a
president or a normal human being.” Franken also said that a few
Republicans have personally expressed their worries about the
president’s “mental competency” to him.

Franken is not the only one. Democratic House Representative Ruben
Gallego says he is worried that Trump is “mentally unstable.” His
colleague in the House of Representatives, Ted Lieu, says that the
massive protests against Trump are merely America’s “white blood cells
of democracy attacking unconstitutional actions. When the central figure
in our world is creating an entire world of unreality, how are we
supposed to respond?”

Harris suggests that Trudeau deal forthrightly with the Great Orange Id:

Stand up for women’s rights against this masher who has defunded Planned
Parenthood. Tell Donald Trump that his immigration policy is right up
there with Japanese internment camps, burning crosses and pointy hats.
Remind him that torture is for monsters, not people in charge of modern
democracies. Put in a good word for the brave Indigenous peoples
demanding justice at Standing Rock. Tell Trump that meeting peaceful and
constitutional dissent with military force is the stuff of dictators.
And whatever you do, don’t let this Prince of the Plutocracy, who may be
playing with a full wallet but not necessarily a full deck, think
you’re willing to amend NAFTA in such a way that corporations will be
unleashed under the full moon of their greed.

Dealing with crazies is part of Trudeau's job description. Kowtowing to them is not.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Some people are calling Donald Trump another Andrew Jackson -- the rough hewn American president who brought the democracy of the common man to the United States. But Henry Giroux is not fooled. For Giroux, Trump is -- in plain terms -- a fascist.The evidence is overwhelming. It's apparent in:

Trump's blatant contempt for the truth, his willingness to embrace a
blend of taunts and threats in his inaugural address, and his eagerness
to enact a surge of regressive executive orders, the ghost of fascism
reasserts itself with a familiar blend of fear and revenge. Unleashing
promises he had made to his angry, die-hard ultranationalist and white
supremacist supporters, Trump targeted a range of groups whom he
believes have no place in American society. These include Muslims,
Syrian refugees and undocumented immigrants, whom he has targeted with a
number of harsh discriminatory policies. The underlying cruelty,
ignorance and punishing, if not criminogenic, intent behind such
policies was made all the clearer when Trump suggested that he intended
to roll back a wide range of environmental protections. He asserted his
willingness to resume the practice of state-sponsored torture and deny
funding to those cities willing to provide sanctuary to undocumented
immigrants.

It's been awhile since the world has faced an unabashedly fascist leader. And memories have faded. Some foolishly insist that Trump should be "given a chance" to implement his program. They wait for him to be normalized:

Lesley Stahl's "60 Minutes" interview with Trump
portrayed him less as a demagogue than as a transformed politician who
was "subdued and serious." In addition, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported
approvingly upon the transition, as if proposed White House counselor
Steve Bannon and proposed attorney general Jeff Sessions, two men with
racism in their pasts, were ordinary appointments. High-profile
celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, stated without irony, in an interview with "Entertainment Tonight"
that "I just saw President-elect Trump with President Obama in the
White House, and it gave me hope." This is quite a stretch given Trump's
history of racist practices, his racist remarks about Blacks, Muslims
and Mexican immigrants during the primary and the presidential
campaigns, and his appointment of a number of cabinet members who
embrace a white nationalist ideology. The New York Times's opinion
writer, Nicholas Kristof, sabotaged his self-proclaimed liberal belief system by noting, in what appears to be acute lapse of judgment, that Americans should "Grit [their] teeth and give Trump a chance." Bill Gates made clear his own and often hidden reactionary worldview
when speaking on CNBC's "Squawk Box." The Microsoft cofounder slipped
into a fog of self-delusion by stating that Trump had the potential to
emulate JFK by establishing an upbeat and desirable mode of "leadership
through innovation."

This week, as Trump's deportation squads rounded up hundreds of "illegal immigrants" -- some of whom have been in the country for over thirty years -- it's become obvious that there is nothing normal about Donald Trump. He is a clear and present danger.

Americans must hang together against Trump. Or, as Benjamin Franklin warned them, they will hang separately. Those who see Trump as Jackson have the wrong Andrew. Like Lincoln's vice president -- Andrew Johnson -- he should be impeached.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Justin Trudeau has been consulting with other world leaders before he takes his trip to Washington on Monday. Presumably, when he deals with Trump, he doesn't want to deal with him alone. That's a good idea. But, Andrew Coyne writes, it's not a new idea:

For forty-odd years after World War II, the policy of the free world
towards the Soviet Union was one of containment: a strategy of
collective resistance, rather than (on the one hand) appeasement or (on
the other) open conflict. We now face the sad reality that, for the next
four years at least, some version of containment will have to be our
policy towards the United States.

It is one of history's great ironies that a policy once championed by the United States will be used against it. But there are good reasons for adopting a policy of containment:

To be sure, the prime minister has the particular task of dealing with a
leader who, to speak precisely, presents with a variety of known
personality disorders; who knows less about foreign policy, or any
policy, than the average doorman or taxi driver; who has no visible
moral compass, is unconstrained by any norm of personal, political or
presidential conduct, and seems determined to avenge any slight to his
monstrous vanity.

To defend our interests, as much as our values, we will have to start
setting boundaries early — picking our battles, yes, but firmly and
patiently asserting our rights. And if we are to do so effectively, we
will need to do so in concert with other countries. The widely varying
reaction to the travel ban, with some world leaders, like Germany’s
Angela Merkel, speaking out clearly against it, while others, like our
own, couched their response in cleverly ambiguous tweets, must not be
repeated. Neither was it sensible for Canada, in its first flustered
response to Trump’s demands to renegotiate NAFTA, to appear so eager to
abandon Mexico to its fate.

We're going to have to stand behind Mexico and our other allies. Trump's strategy is classically authoritarian: Divide and conquer. Watching things fall apart suits his purposes just fine. Trudeau -- and the rest of us -- can't allow that to happen.

Friday, February 10, 2017

The Trump administration is only three weeks old, but already its character is easy to define. It's all Donald, all the time. Paul Krugman writes:

It’s already clear that any hopes that Mr. Trump and those around him
would be even slightly ennobled by the responsibilities of office were
foolish. Every day brings further evidence that this is a man who
completely conflates the national interest with his personal
self-interest, and who has surrounded himself with people who see it the
same way. And each day also brings further evidence of his lack of
respect for democratic values.

You might be tempted to say that the latest flare-up, over Nordstrom’s
decision to drop Ivanka Trump’s clothing line, is trivial. But it isn’t.
For one thing, until now it would have been inconceivable that a
sitting president would attack a private company for decisions that hurt
his family’s business interests.

Mr. Trump’s attack on Judge James Robart, who put a stay on his
immigration ban, was equally unprecedented. Previous presidents,
including Barack Obama, have disagreed with and complained about
judicial rulings. But that’s very different from attacking the very
right of a judge — or, as the man who controls 4,000 nuclear weapons put it, a “so-called judge” — to rule against the president.

But worst of all is Trump's suggestion that restraining his power will lead to a terrorist attack:

Never mind the utter falsity of the claim that bad people are “pouring
in,” or for that matter of the whole premise behind the ban. What we see
here is the most powerful man in the world blatantly telegraphing his
intention to use national misfortune to grab even more power. And the
question becomes, who will stop him?

So far, two courts have stopped him. But, ultimately, it will be up to Americans to stop him -- if they want to. Until then, it's going to be all about Donald, all of the time.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

Ashifa Kassam reports in The Guardian that Sarah Palin is being considered for the post of American Ambassador to Canada. Presumably, her main qualification for the job is that, from Alaska, she can see Canada. Be that as it may, rumours of her appointment have sparked typically acerbic Canadian criticism:

“Sarah Palin as ambassador?” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus asked on Twitter. “Well that would show how little Steve Bannon and his pal @realDonaldTrump think of Canada.”

“Appointing Sarah Palin as the US ambassador to Canada is, like, ultimate trolling,” noted one.
“If he makes Sarah Palin the US Ambassador to Canada. I say we keep our
oil and hockey players. BTW … does she speak Canadian?” Asked another.

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

North American stock markets are booming. The conventional wisdom is that -- economically -- happy days are here again. But Joseph Ingram isn't so optimistic. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of European authoritarians cast dark shadows:

Both Trump’s election and the June Brexit vote in Britain are fueling
the growth of European populist movements. Combined with his skepticism
as to the European Union’s desirability — a sentiment he apparently
shares with Russian President Vladimir Putin — these movements
constitute an existential threat to its existence, the break-up of which
would surely result in the end of the liberal international order that
we have known for the past seventy years.

The consequence would be a leap into an abyss of policy chaos,
adversarial trade and geo-strategic relationships (including among
former allies) and an instability that likely would produce a global
recession — or worse. President Trump’s tiffs with the leaders of two of
the U.S.’s closest allies — the Prime Minister of Australia and the
President of Mexico — are a sign of things to come, as was this week’s
meeting of European leaders in Malta.

Things do not bode well for the world economy:

To successfully counter these ominous trends will require economic
policies that seek to promote the interests of the many rather than the
few. Obscene gaps in income must be narrowed. The task of pressing
governments to adopt such policies needs to be animated by a popular
response — not one seen as elitist, nor driven by any particular
political party or ideology. Nor should the response be inspired by
failed neo-liberal or neo-Marxist policies of the past.

The concerns of organized labour, rural communities, small towns and the
young will need to be addressed directly, thereby shifting the impact
of public policy away from the asymmetric benefits it has been extending
to the corporate sector and its elites. Governments also will need to
consider limits on the application of new technologies that risk
creating massive structural unemployment or destructive
de-industrialization.

Trump's cabinet of billionaires makes it clear that what is needed will not be delivered. And his deregulation of Wall Street suggests that history will repeat itself:

It will be equally important to remind people that the deregulation of
the financial and industrial sectors now advocated by President Trump’s
government, and many of Europe’s populists, is what brought the U.S.
economy double-digit unemployment, a housing crisis, a critically
weakened financial system and the great recession of 2008.

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Word has it that Donald Trump and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnball are not getting on well these days. But, on one issue, they are brothers-in-arms. Michael Mann and Christopher Wright write:

For a country that has nurtured world-leading innovations in solar
photovoltaic and other renewable energy technologies and that is
particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change – be it in the
form of record heat, devastating floods, more widespread drought,
coastal inundation from sea level rise combined with stronger tropical
storms, or the demise of the Great Barrier Reef – doubling down on the
traditional fossil fuel energy path is particularly short-sighted.

If there is one characteristic that both men share, it is shortsigthedness. Both have leveraged profits against the future -- much like the Tobacco Lords of two generations ago:

Like big tobacco before them, fossil fuel advocates have attacked
mainstream climate science to confuse the public and policymakers about
the reality and threat of human-caused climate change. As a result, we
have seen a full-scale assault on a century and half of established
science. For many climate scientists this has involved attacks from
conservative politicians and rightwing lobby groups, orchestrated
campaigns of harassment via mainstream and social media, challenges to
job security and careers, and in some cases, death threats. Indeed, as
recounted in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, one of us (Michael Mann) has been subject to all of those things.

Beyond destroying our politics and corroding public trust in science,
climate change denial also threatens the future of a habitable planet
and a viable global economy. As a growing body of research has revealed,
the maintenance of a “fossil fuels forever” mentality has real
implications for the future of global food production, biodiversity,
social functioning and geopolitical security. Leading economies around
the world have recognised that the decarbonisation of energy and
transport systems are key to the future prosperity of human
civilisation.

No wonder Mr. Turnball isn't up in arms about Trump's phone call. They are Brothers-In-Denial.

Monday, February 06, 2017

The battle lines have been drawn. Donald Trump says he wants to "make America great again." Chris Hedges says he wants to "make America ungovernable." He warns his readers that the Trump Crew worship the god of Ignorance. Their motto is "Burn It Down!"

The Trump regime’s demented project of social engineering, which will
come wrapped in a Christianized fascism, can be implemented only if it
quickly seizes control of the bureaucratic mechanisms, an action that Max Weber
pointed out is the prerequisite for exercising power in industrial and
technocratic societies. Once what the historian Guglielmo Ferrero calls
the “silken threads” of habit, tradition and legality are gone, the
“iron chains” of dictatorship will impose social cohesion.

The Trump regime is populated with blind fanatics. They believe in
one truth, which is whatever they proclaim at the moment (any such
declaration may contradict what they said a few hours before). They are
possessed with one idea—conflict. They venerate a demented
hypermasculinity that includes a sacralization of violence, misogyny, a
disdain for empathy, and the self-appointed right to engage in bouts of
frenzied rage. These characteristics, they believe, are a sign of
masculinity. The highest aesthetic is militarism, violence and war.
Without conflict, without enemies real or imagined, their ideological
structures and racism collapse into a heap of contradictions and
absurdities. They will attempt to thwart nonviolent, nationwide
resistance with force. And they will attempt to stoke counterviolence,
including through the use of agents provocateurs, as a response. If we
speak back to them in the language of violence, we will fail. We will be
transformed into the monsters we seek to defeat.

Bannon and his followers on the “alt-right,”
self-declared intellectuals, ferret out facts and formulas that
buttress their peculiar worldview and discard truths that contradict
their messianic delusions. They mouth a few clichés and quote a few
philosophers to justify bigotry, chauvinism and governmental repression.
It is propaganda masquerading as ideology. These pseudo-intellectuals
are singularly incurious. They are linguistically, culturally and
historically illiterate about the Muslim world, and about most other
foreign cultures, yet blithely write off one-fifth of the world’s
population—Muslims—as irredeemable.

The only defence, Hedges writes, is in the kind of non-violent resistance that makes the United States ungovernable. Americans are about to enter their Second Civil War.

Sunday, February 05, 2017

Some commentators have been surprised by the ascension of Donald Trump. Nick Cohen writes that they shouldn't be. Trump comes from the world of business. And, in the business world, his type has been in the driver's seat for sometime:

The radical economist Chris Dillow once wrote that, while the fall of
communism discredited the centrally planned economy, the centrally
planned corporation, with the autocratic leader who tolerated no
dissent, not only survived 1989, but blossomed.

Dillow is not alone in worrying about the harm the little Hitlers of the
corporation might bring. Since the crash, economists have looked as a
matter of urgency at how hierarchies encourage petty tyrants to brag
their way to the top. They exhibit all the symptoms of narcissistic
personality disorder: a desire to dominate, overconfidence, a sense of
entitlement, an inability to listen to others or allow others to speak
and a passion for glory. If you want to know how they can win the votes
of those around them, remember Fred Goodwin’s vainglorious decision to takeover ABN Amro.
Perhaps the single worst decision in UK business history, whose
consequences we are still paying for, was not opposed by a single member
of the RBS board.

Narcissists in business are more likely to seek macho takeovers and less
likely to engage in the hard work of innovating and creating profitable
firms, the researchers found. They are more likely to cook the books to
feed their cults of the personality and make, if not America, then
themselves look great again. Academics from the University of California
have asked the obvious question: why would rational companies let the
fascism of the firm survive? Surely they ought to be protecting their
businesses, as free market theory dictates, rather than allow dangerous
and grasping men and women to risk their destruction.

They found
what most of us instinctively know to be true: in the right
circumstances, compulsive liars can create compulsive believers, as
Trump has done. “Overconfident individuals attained status” because
their peers believed the stories they told about themselves. It should
not be a surprise that Donald Trump, Arron Banks and oligarchs backing
the Russian and east European strongmen come from business. The age of
the dictators never came to an end in the workplace.

In business, we have normalized this kind of behaviour for decades. Moreover, this kind of behaviour has become the stuff of reality television. Trump made his name on television for fourteen years. Last night, Kevin O'Leary -- of Dragon's Den and Shark Tank fame -- participated for the first time in the Conservative leadership debates.

Saturday, February 04, 2017

Still caught in the 1960s, his stenographer waiting to take dictation
and type out that all-important letter to Vladimir Putin on her
Selectric, Trump has a similarly dated view of the American economy. For
the president, the country outside of Manhattan and parts of California
is made up of thousands of small towns populated by God-fearing white
people, with hubbie heading off every day to the local widget factory
carrying his trusty lunch bucket while Harriet stays home to look after
the kids. Of course, that was before the evil Mexicans turned up one
dark night and stole all their jobs.

So when Trump talks about ‘saving’ jobs, he’s thinking about
manufacturing and the Rust Belt. He said as much when he met automakers
last month to berate them for being disloyal and to bully them into
never sending another manufacturing job outside America.

Plants are where it’s at for Donald Trump — making real stuff, in states
that voted for him. Offices, research and development centres,
universities … not so much. He doesn’t understand what they do and, in
any case, they’re likely located in states like California,
Massachusetts and Washington and college towns across America — places
which voted for Hillary instead.

But that's not the economy he's living in. And the new economy has thrived because of immigrants:

Tech companies depend on talent to survive and prosper — and they’re
irate. Diversity is literally in their DNA. Steve Jobs, the late founder
of Apple, was the son of a Syrian immigrant. Sergey Brin, the
co-founder of Google, was born in Russia. Brin was so upset he joined
the anti-Trump protests at San Francisco’s international airport after
the refugee ban was imposed.

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, quit Trump’s economic
advisory council after suffering a barrage of criticism for appearing to
back the president on the migrant ban. In a note to employees, he said
that “immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our
country’s success and quite honestly to Uber’s.” Microsoft, complaining
that 76 of its employees and their families had been affected by the
travel ban already, is pleading with the Trump administration to create
exceptions for their affected employees.

Freeman suggests that Canada should make the most of Trump's ignorance:

What the Canadian government should do now is call the president of
Microsoft and offer expedited visas for any affected Microsoft employees
that would allow them to work at Microsoft’s Vancouver campus, or any
other facility across the country. Similar offers can be made to Google —
which already employs 1,000 people at facilities in Waterloo, Toronto
and Montreal — and to any other U.S. tech company.

A group of Canadian tech leaders has already asked the Trudeau
government to offer “immediate and targeted” assistance, including
temporary residency that would allow those people banned by the Trump
executive orders to live and work in Canada until they complete
permanent residency applications here.

We can even send a couple of chartered planes down to Seattle or San
Jose to fetch these high-tech workers and have our telegenic prime
minister greet them with a smile, a handshake and a warm parka on
arrival, letting them know that they’re safe now and can sleep soundly
without fear of a roundup by U.S. immigration officials.

Rather than fulminating about Trump's stupidity, Canadians should take advantage of it.

Friday, February 03, 2017

Kellyanne Conway justifies Donald Trump's travel ban by referring to what she calls the "Bowling Greene Massacre." It's true that there's a city in Kentucky called Bowling Green. But there never was any massacre. Claire Phipps explains:

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, has come in for criticism and ridicule after blaming two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened.

Conway, the US president’s former campaign manager who has frequently
faced the press to defend his controversial moves, cited the fictional
“Bowling Green massacre” in an interview in which she backed the travel ban imposed on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball programme on Thursday evening, Conway compared the executive order issued by Trump in his first week in the White House to what she described as a six-month ban imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama.

It's true that two Iraqi men where arrested in Bowling Green on weapons charges. But Conway is peddling her own version of "alternative facts:"

Two Iraqi men arrested in 2011 did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and are currently serving life sentences for federal terrorism offences.
But there was no massacre, nor were they accused of planning one. The
US department of justice, announcing their convictions in 2012, said:
“Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.”

Of terrorist attacks on US soil between 1975 and 2015 found that foreign
nationals from the seven countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban –
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia – have killed no
Americans.

Thursday, February 02, 2017

Justin Trudeau's newly minted Minister of Democratic Institutions has received her mandate letter. In part, it reads:

There has been tremendous work by the House of Commons Special
Committee on Electoral Reform, outreach by Members of Parliament by all
parties, and engagement of 360,000 individuals in Canada through
mydemocracy.ca … A clear preference for a new electoral system, let
alone a consensus, has not emerged. Furthermore, without a clear
preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s
interest. Changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate.

Rather than deliver the goods, Trudeau backed down when it was clear
that electoral reform had been hopelessly mismanaged, would likely
require a referendum, and would not benefit the Liberals in any case.

Instead, Trudeau has changed the channel and maintains that -- after Russian interference in the American election -- we should focus on electoral cyber security. It's a Trumpian distraction.

Wednesday, February 01, 2017

If you want to know what is really going on in Donald Trump's White House, Lawrence Douglas suggests that you take a good, hard look at Steve Bannon:

As we now know, the drafting and rollout of the travel ban was largely
the work of Steve Bannon, the president’s chief political strategist. It
was Bannon who reportedly overruled
the proposal to exempt green card holders from the ban. And it was
Bannon who pushed the order through without consulting experts at the
Department of Homeland Security or at the state department.

The Nacht und Nebel quality
of the ban’s announcement makes clear that the president’s chief
strategist wanted to send tremors through the world. Here was bold proof
that the portentous accents of Trump’s inaugural address, also Bannon’s
work, was not mere rhetoric.

Now the world would know what “America First” means – not first in
democracy or human rights; not first in recognizing an obligation to
victims of humanitarian crisis (some of which we have helped create).
No, this was America first in pugilism, parochialism and misplaced
protectionism.

Douglas suggests that in Trump Bannon found the perfect empty vessel:

Bannon is not the president’s servant. The president is his tool. For
years, Bannon cast about for the proper vehicle to carry the fight
forward. Sarah Palin, Rick Perry –they were considered possible
material. Now in Donald Trump he has found adequate if imperfect stuff.
Both are workaholics. Both share a protectionist mindset. Both are
combative.

Though
true that previous administrations have approved visits by political
advisers, including David Axelrod during the Obama years, there’s at
least one significant difference. Within a day of the Friday afternoon
blitzkrieg that ultimately deleted Yates, two council members
specifically required to advise the president on security matters — the
director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff — were stripped of their regular seats on the NSC’s principals
committee. Now why would this be?

Is the answer to Parker's question that Donald J. Trump is a doofus and Stephen K. Bannon is the real president?

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.